


Not Recovery, But...

by orphan_account



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Burns, Forgiveness, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Nightmares, or at least a little further from a bad ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-04
Updated: 2018-08-04
Packaged: 2019-06-21 11:58:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15557220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Caleb has a nightmare and Nott gets hurt. Although healing is there, it can't fix everything, and it's nothing new for Caleb to be unsure if he'll be forgiven.





	Not Recovery, But...

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this before Episode 26 happened, but more angst is exactly what this fandom needs, right?

          Caleb didn’t have nightmares often. Not anymore.

          He’d pushed it all back, mostly, crammed it down into some corner of his mind. The burning. The screams. But even then, he could still feel the cracks they’d caused. Every time he used magic. Every time anyone told him he had so much potential. It brought back bad memories.

          He didn’t have nightmares often, but they were always horrible. They used to mostly be memories—the fire, or the asylum. Once or twice he’d dreamed that Trent Ikithon had found him. But it had always been centered around him. Around his well-being, or his trauma.

          Then Nott came along. This little goblin girl worked with him to escape the jail and then attached herself to him like a stray cat. He wasn’t sure what made her stick around at first, before they became friends, but he was grateful for it.

          But when he got attached to Nott, the nightmares adjusted accordingly.

          This time, the first thing he heard was the scream. Rough and guttural. Nott’s war cry. Then he heard the heavy _chunk_ of her crossbow firing, and then he was surrounded and she was surrounded, too, by men and women in hoods. The Empire’s secret police.

          “Nott?” he whispered through the fear squeezing his lungs. He reached for her, but she wasn’t there anymore. “Nott!” He swore in Zemnian, frantically scanning for her.

          “Caleb!” She was struggling in the grasp of a man who had lifted her off the ground in a bear hug, pinning her arms to her sides. Her crossbow was gone. Caleb tried to cast something at her captor to free her, but nothing happened. His magic failed him. Nott twisted and managed to sink her teeth into the man’s arm. Someone cracked her in the side of the head with a gloved fist.

          “Nott!” he cried again, attempting to shove through the figures, but they gripped his arms, dragging him away, binding him to something solid with his arms twisted behind his back. “Let me _go,_ you—” He switched to Zemnian, spitting curses at them and struggling with all his might, but he couldn’t break free. As he writhed against whatever bound him, he realized that Nott had disappeared in the swarm of secret police. Deep terror rooted in his chest, and he struggled harder as the panic rose like bile. They were going to _kill her_. Not because she was a goblin, but simply because she’d been with him. No. No, no, no, she was supposed to be safe with him, they were supposed to be safe together, he was supposed to _protect_ her!

          Although he’d imagined his panic had remained in his mind, it only took him a moment to realize it had spilled to the outside, and he was begging the emotionless things around him, “No, let her go, please let her go, don’t hurt her, I’ll do anything, just please, don’t—”

          “Caleb?” someone whispered beside him.

          His eyes snapped open in the inn room where he’d fallen asleep. There was a person over him, their face shadowed by a hood, and immediately his heart climbed into his throat and he cast fire at them.

          It hit point blank. The little creature fell backwards with a cry of pain, and the noise jolted Caleb. He scrambled out of bed. “Nott!”

          She was curled up on the floor, holding her face and whimpering. He dropped to his knees at her side. Even at a glance, he could tell it was bad. “I’m so sorry, Nott! I panicked, I’m so sorry! Let me see, how bad is it? How bad are you hurt?” Nott scrunched up, hiding her face. She was shaking. Crying. “I’m so sorry,” he repeated, his voice breaking, “I’ll get you to Jester, just hold on!” He gathered her up against his shoulder and stumbled out into the hall.

          Jester and Beau’s room was nearby. He reached it and pounded on the door with his fist. “Jester?” he called, struggling to support his little friend in one arm. “Jester, I need help! I need healing!”

          A second later the door opened, revealing Beau standing on the other side, scowling. “What the _fuck,_ Caleb?” she mumbled, her voice and expression heavy with sleep. Then she seemed to notice Nott, clutching Caleb’s coat and hiding her face. The edge of the goblin’s hood was burned. “What the fuck happened?”

          “I—she’s hurt,” Caleb managed, trying to look past her into the room. “Is Jester there? Is she awake? Jester?”

          Jester appeared behind Beau, rubbing her eyes and yawning. “Caleb?” she said sleepily.

          “I need you to heal Nott,” Caleb told her, stepping forward. Beau let him pass, apparently too shocked to do anything else.

          Jester’s mouth opened in shock when she saw the state of their friend. “Yes, just—just bring her over here, you can put her on my bed…”  
          Caleb carefully lowered Nott onto the covers. She was still whimpering, obviously in a lot of pain. Caleb stepped back next to Beau, clutching himself and watching anxiously as Jester knelt next to the bed and cast a healing spell.

          It didn’t take long. A few seconds, maybe. Then Jester lowered her hands. “Is that better, Nott?”

          “…Yeah.”

          Caleb was always happy to hear that scratchy little voice, but he’d never been as happy to hear it as he was now. He breathed a sigh of relief as the goblin girl sat up, gingerly feeling her face. “Thank you, Jester,” she said.

          “What happened?” Beau asked bluntly.

          Caleb immediately felt sick, but before he could reply, Nott spoke up. “I got the itch again, so I went out to pick some people’s pockets,” she said quietly. Caleb looked at her, eyes wide, but she kept her gaze on the bed. “But I got caught, and I got spells cast at me, so I came back to me and Caleb’s room, and then Caleb brought me here.”

          Beau crossed her arms and sat down on her bed. “Nott, you need to quit stealing people’s shit. It only ever causes trouble for all of us.”

          Nott didn’t reply. Instead, she slid past Jester and climbed down onto the floor. “Thank you again,” she told Jester. “Come on, Caleb. I’m sorry I woke you up in the middle of the night.”

          Beau scowled and got to her feet, demanding, “What, Jester and I don’t get an apology or anything?”

          Without bothering to respond, Nott took Caleb’s hand and led him out of the room.

          Neither of them spoke as they made their way back down the hall. The door to their room was still open, and Caleb instinctively hesitated to enter it even though he hadn’t felt anything from the wards. Nott disappeared into the doorway ahead of him and returned a second later. “It’s empty,” she told him. He stepped inside, and she shut the door.

          There was a pause before Caleb slowly plodded across the room and sat down heavily on his bed. He lowered his head into his hands. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered.

          “It’s all right.” Nott climbed up next to him and sat with her arms crossed over her stomach, leaning forward to talk to him. “You didn’t mean to. I’m sorry I scared you.”

          "It is not all right," he murmured.

          Nott was silent for a moment. "You didn't mean to," she repeated quietly, not looking at him. She was silent for a moment before asking him, “Do you want to tell me what you were dreaming?”

          He just shook his head.

          “Why don’t you go back to sleep?” she asked.

          He blinked. “I’m a little afraid to close my eyes.”

          There as another pause. “Well, I’m going back to sleep. You woke me up with all your mumbling earlier, and I need my rest.” She pulled her knees up to her chest and curled up beside him. Caleb smiled wearily down at her, and as he did, he noticed Frumpkin climb out from under the bed. The cat hopped up onto Caleb’s lap, meowing up into his face.

          Caleb’s smile settled. “I’m going to lie down,” he told Nott quietly. She didn’t reply, but when he maneuvered around her to lie with his head propped up against the headboard, she wordlessly crawled over to curl up with her back to the soft part his side. Frumpkin climbed up onto Caleb and settled with his head on Caleb’s chest, purring.

          Still smiling softly, Caleb started to run his hands down Frumpkin’s back. But even with that comfort under his fingers, he couldn’t seem to make himself close his eyes.

          “Nott?” he murmured after a while, not really expecting her to still be awake.

          But she was. “Yeah?” she asked.

          “Why did you tell Jester someone else did that to you?”

          She didn’t reply for a long time. He looked down, thinking she might have drifted off before she could reply. But her eyes were open, although she wasn’t looking at him. “They know you’d never do anything to hurt me,” she said. “They need to know that. At least, you wouldn’t on purpose.” She paused. “I don’t want them to think you’re dangerous, or something.”

          Caleb’s mind was pulled back to that day over a decade ago, watching his home burn. "And if I am dangerous?” he said.

          “You’re only dangerous to people who hurt you,” she told him. “And people who hurt me.” She shifted a little to look at him out of the corner of her eye. “And I’m dangerous, too,” she added. “To people who hurt me, and people who hurt you.” She paused. “And people who hurt Jester.”

          Caleb gave a small huff of laughter. “I think anyone who hurts Jester would have to answer to _everyone_ in our little group, not just you and me.” Nott giggled a little, and they fell into silence for a while before Caleb spoke again. “You know, you always talk about how I protect you and keep you safe and all… but a lot of times, I sort of feel like it’s the other way around.”

          Nott curled up a little tighter. “Well, it is. We look out for each other. That’s what friends do.”

          Caleb smiled again, but then he remembered the pain she’d been in only a few minutes ago, and all the harm he’d caused.

          As if sensing the change in his mood, Nott said, “I forgive you, Caleb. You didn’t mean to.”

          That jolted him a little. Weeks ago, she’d asked him if what he did to fuck up his life was something he could be forgiven for, and he’d told her he didn’t know. And then he’d told her what he’d done, and she’d comforted him. And now there was this. It felt as if she was forgiving him for sending his life up in flames, for everything he’d done that had broken everything so badly, and for what he’d done to hurt her because of the leftover cracks. _You didn’t mean to,_ she reminded him. It didn’t change the fact that he had, and that his parents could never forgive him for what he’d done. But, at the very least, Nott had.

          Caleb exhaled deeply and moved one hand to Nott’s shoulder, hugging her against himself. “Thank you,” he murmured.

          And he stayed like that, with Frumpkin purring on his chest and Nott dozing at his side and one hand on each of them, until eventually, he drifted off to sleep again. This time, there were no dreams; just the newly-familiar warmth that surrounded him.

**Author's Note:**

> Recovery implies going back to how something was before, and that doesn't seem possible for anyone this group right now. I don't think it's been possible for Caleb since way before we met him
> 
> Find me on tumblr [here!](http://severalsmallhedgehogs.tumblr.com/)


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